Aquabyte and Imenco announce underwater camera partnership

Machine-learning enabled aquaculture camera to hit the market by early 2019.

Aquabyte, a building computer vision and machine learning models to count sea lice, measure biomass, and assess fish health at Norwegian salmon fish farms; and Imenco Havbruk , an aquaculture subsidiary of Norwegian offshore/subsea equipment company Imenco have announced a partnership for a machine-learning enabled aquaculture camera.

The Aquabyte-compatible enclosure, made by Imenco, runs two 4K camera sensors and uses lights to increase surface contrast on the fish. The result is a setup where all life stages of sea lice are picked up on the image.

“We are very excited about this collaboration – and to work with a well respected company with proven and quality products like Imenco. With this partnership, both Aquabyte and Imenco are able to focus on what they do best – Aquabyte building algorithms and Imenco building cameras,” said Aquabyte CEO Bryton Shang. “This makes it easier for us to build even more accurate automatic lice counting, where we can differentiate even the smallest life stages of the sea lice.”

Aquabyte plans to offer several product lines compatible with the Imenco camera – the first product to be launched will be sea lice counting, followed by biomass estimation, pellet counting, and fish health assessment. The software uses advanced machine learning techniques and is able to re-identify unique fish. “The idea is that instead of buying single purpose expensive camera and moving it pen-to-pen, our companies can jointly offer a non-invasive camera for each net pen for continuous monitoring. Our hope that the Imenco camera can be a common platform on which to deploy new products for fish farmers.”